Did Cuban missile crisis delay the inevitable?

No-one wants to remember Vasili Arkipov. The Soviet submarine B59’s second-in-command opted not to fire a nuclear torpedo at the US navy during the Cuban missile crisis in 1963. He “saved” the world then, and there have been other close shaves since, but was it simply delaying the inevitable?

Russian President Vladimir Putin has in effect lost the Ukrainian war. He’s in a corner, openly threatening to use nuclear weapons. Western intelligence profiles have concluded that he is mentally and logistically capable of using them either tactically in Ukraine or ballistically further afield.

The threat of a Russian nuclear strike is therefore as real now as it was in 1963. While the world was emotionally diverted by the royal funeral, intelligence services were sweating over risk assessments. That’s probably one reason US President Joe Biden took the beast and not the bus.

When faced with such a clear and present threat, does the West sit like a rabbit in the proverbial headlights hoping Putin doesn’t give the order, or stage a preemptive strike? I know what Gen Curtis Lemay wanted to do in ’63. But what are the risks, given that Russian missiles are predominantly mobile and easy to hide?

Then again, maybe a preemptive strike is exactly what Putin wants, to get his sceptical constituency onside. “We’ve been attacked by the evil West”. “I told you this would happen.” “Together we must fight to defeat the invaders of Mother Russia.”

The profligate use of fossil fuels began with the 1946 Pax Americana, heralded by the detonations at Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Wouldn’t it be ironic if “our world” ended in the same way?              

James Cunningham
Camps Bay

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